Introduction

The idea for this anthology of historical documents on the struggle to obtain
civil rights by Mexican people in the United States came about after I indicated
to Nicolds Kanellos, the director of Arte Publico Press, that in preparing my
books, Chicano! and ipobre Raza!, I had amassed a treasure trove of primary
documents pertinent to this topic. Professor Kanellos immediately suggested
that we publish a documents history. We both felt that through the reading of
original accounts, students, teachers, and lay people in general would obtain a
better appreciation for the experience of Mexicans in the U.S as they struggled
against rejection and repression. These records-personal letters, newspaper
accounts, treaties, proclamations, government studies, diplomatic correspon-
dence, family papers, founding papers of organizations, etc.-are
contemporaneous to four eras in the overall history of civil rights and Mexican
Americans. They reveal that the authors resorted to individual acts of resistance,
to organizational efforts, and to appeals to the Mexican and U.S. governments
to rectify problems of abuse. They fall under the rubrics of lost land identifica-
tion, Mexico Lindo nationalism, Mexican Americanism, and the Chicano
Movement.
The documents appear in nine chapters organized around chronology and
themes. Each section of primary sources is preceded by a short survey history
for each era, which contextualizes the documents within a proper historical
framework.
The Lost Land
The ʻLost Landʻ era is chronicled in Chapter One. By the 1890s, railroads,
outside capital, and outside entrepreneurs disrupted or eliminated the society
forged by Hispanics and Anglos in the territories that the U.S. had acquired from
Mexico in the mid-nineteenth century. Mexicans, native to the Southwest, felt
as if they had lost their past and even their identity, ergo a ʻlost landʻ identity
emerged. In this era, the southwest Mexican link to central Mexico was weak.
Even early immigrants crossing the border from northern Mexico found more

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